One comment about my annotations made me rewrite my whole note system

I was swapping a sci-fi novel at the library last Tuesday and the lady at the checkout desk glanced at my margin notes, said 'you're summarizing, not conversing,' and that hit me hard. I went back and rewrote my last 3 months of book annotations to ask questions and argue with the author instead of just recapping plot points. Has anyone else tried a different note style after getting feedback like that?

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1 Comment

dixon.iris22d ago

Does the conversation approach actually stick with you longer, or are you just trading one kind of busywork for another? I tried arguing with my books for a week and found myself writing "no, you're wrong" on every other page without real thought behind it. The real trick might be picking one style per book based on what the author is doing, not forcing a single method on everything.